The Phantom Rider; or The Giant Chief's Fate

By Maro O. Rolfe

This book is a classic turn-of-the-century cowboys and Indians adventure story. Featuring a strong heroine, Indian tribes and a brave hero, it's packed full of adventure, action and battles. Set out in the American West, it's a characteristic escapade story, and while some of the phrasing and words have aged poorly, it remains a classically entertaining novel. The story is broken down into 18 short chapters making it easy to read for children.

• Language: English
• Publisher: DigiCat
• Release date: Jun 13, 2022
• ISBN: 8596547059653

Book preview

Maro O. Rolfe

The Phantom Rider; or The Giant Chief's Fate

EAN 8596547059653

DigiCat, 2022

Contact: [e-mail]

Table of Contents

CHAPTER I. VINNIE’S PERIL.

CHAPTER II. CLANCY VERE AND HIS TROUBLE.

CHAPTER III. VINNIE’S STRATAGEM.

CHAPTER IV. THE PHANTOM WARRIOR.

CHAPTER V. THE MAYBOB TWINS.

CHAPTER VI. OUT IN THE STORM.

CHAPTER VII. OVER THE PRECIPICE!

CHAPTER VIII. THE GIANT’S STORY.

CHAPTER IX. LOST IN THE FOREST.

CHAPTER X. A BAFFLED VENGEANCE.

CHAPTER XI. A WELCOME VISITOR.

CHAPTER XII. THE FOREST ROSE.

CHAPTER XIII. THE FACE AT THE WINDOW.

CHAPTER XIV. VINNIE A PRISONER.

CHAPTER XV. WHAT THE SCOUTS FOUND.

CHAPTER XVI. THE PHANTOM RIDER!

CHAPTER XVII. A REUNION OF HEARTS.

CHAPTER XVIII. CONCLUSION.

CHAPTER I.

VINNIE’S PERIL.

Table of Contents

The scene of our story is laid in the great North-west.

It was a bleak, windy day in November. The shrill blasts wailed through the forest trees like the last despairing cry of a lost spirit, and gust after gust beat and roared around the little log cabin standing so silent and lonely, half buried in the midst of the Titanic oaks that spread their long branches protectingly over its low roof, and whose sturdy trunks environed it, seeming to keep silent and untiring guard over its four rough walls.

The scene within the cabin was in striking contrast with the wild aspect without.

It was a rude but homelike place, and despite the chinked walls and rough furniture, there was such an air of plain comfort as one might expect to see in the abode of the sturdy western pioneer.

A young girl sat by a table engaged in embroidering a broad strip of dressed deer-skin with fancifully colored beads and quills—a blue-eyed, slender-looking little woman with shining masses of golden-brown hair falling unconfined about her small, shapely head, and down over her shoulders until it reached the waist of her dress, which fitted her willowy form to perfection, and whose ample folds half concealed, half disclosed a small, neatly-clad foot and well-turned ankle.

Her sunny blue eyes held a soft, loving light, and a bright smile played continually upon her dainty face and around her rosy little mouth, with its ripe lips half parted from the rows of small white teeth.

But the azure eyes could flash with courage and determination, and the pretty mouth could be hard and stern with its strawberry lips tightly drawn and its tiny, gleaming teeth hard-set.

The settler’s daughter was very lovely, and she possessed a nerve and courage far beyond her sex.

A tall, powerfully-made man of fifty stood near the great wide-mouthed fire-place, in which a ruddy blaze leapt and glowed fantastically, shedding a pleasant radiance over the homely place that could not but be grateful to one who, like Emmett Darke, was preparing to leave it and go out into the wind and cold of the chill November day. But the settler, long used to the perils of border life, thought little of this.

His sharp gray eye and firm through pleasant mouth bespoke indomitable courage and strength of will; and as he stood there in the red glow of the dancing firelight, buckling on his deer-skin belt in which he thrust the borderman’s trusty companion, a long, keen-edged hunting-knife, with a brace of heavy pistols, he looked the personification of the ideal hunter of the far western wilds.

A huge blood-hound lay on the floor at his feet—a large, red-eyed creature with white, gleaming teeth—a brute that might be a true and faithful friend, but could not but be a terribly dangerous enemy.

The object in the room most likely to attract the attention of a casual observer was a small square box of polished wood, standing on the table.

Besides the tall clock ticking in a corner, this casket was the only visible thing that bore evidence of having been made by hands more skilled than those of the settler, or with tools other than those common implements ever ready at the pioneer’s grasp, the ax and the auger.

What this curious little box contained, will appear hereafter.

Soon the hunter’s preparations were completed, and slinging a long rifle, which he had taken down from its place on three pegs in the wall, across his shoulders, he turned to his daughter who had wound the soft deer-skin belt, upon which she had wrought innumerable fancy devices, gracefully about her waist and shoulders, and stood regarding him with a merry light sparkling in her blue eyes.

How do I look, papa? she asked. Like some dusky forest princess?

And she finished by placing a jaunty turban in which were fastened several bright-colored plumes, which drooped down until they touched her beautiful golden hair, coquettishly on her head.

More like a regular angel, wings and all! he exclaimed, admiringly: for Emmett Darke loved his beautiful motherless child more than his life. That hair and those eyes of yours don’t look very Injiny. Wouldn’t that red lover of yours go wild if he saw you now? I don’t wonder he’s half-crazy and calls you ‘Sun-Hair!’ How about that youngster, Clancy Vere, eh, Vinnie? Has he an eye to beauty?

The maiden blushed rosy red; but the laughing eyes became thoughtful in a moment.

Do you know, papa, that I often think of him—the Indian? Oh, if he should come some day when you are gone! He is wild and bloodthirsty and his passions are ungovernable. He has taken a solemn vow to make me his wife!

He shall never fulfill that vow! cried the old man, with a dangerous light in his cold gray eyes. I’ll have his life, first! If he comes here again I’ll give him a free pass to the happy hunting-grounds!

Emmett Darke’s face was almost white with rage, and he brought the heavy stock of his long rifle down on the floor with a sharp bang.

Just so sure as that red devil has the misfortune to be caught anywhere near my cabin, I will shoot him down like the coward he is! My daughter is never to become a squaw, eh, Vinnie?

Never, father! Never will I become the Indian’s wife! I would sooner shed my own heart’s blood!

She spoke so calmly and yet determinedly that her father half-shuddered. He knew that she meant every word, and he breathed an inward prayer that God would watch over his lonely child and guard her from all peril during his absence.

The hunter stood silent and motionless for a few moments, thinking intently. Arousing himself at length, he said, turning to the blood-hound, who was on his feet in an instant, running around him and licking his hands:

Come, Death! We must go.

In a few minutes they had passed out, and were walking rapidly and silently through the forest.

As Darke went away, a face appeared among the thick bushes close by the cabin—a red face, hideously daubed with black and yellow paint, with long, coarse black hair, hanging down the sunken jaws, and fierce black eyes flashing triumph and exultation as the hunter disappeared from view. Darke did not see this face, and the bushes closed over it in a moment, concealing it as suddenly as it had appeared.

After her father was gone, Vinnie went and stood before the fireplace, looking down into the red mass of leaping flames.

She was deeply buried in thought, and she heard no sound save the hissing of the fire and the wailing of the wind around the corners of the cabin, and through the bare branches of the great oaks outside.

She little thought what a lovely picture she made as she stood thus, silent and motionless—one might almost imagine breathless—with a dreamy, far-off look in her soft eyes, and the glancing blaze lighting up her fair face till she looked, in fantastic guise, like some beautified Fairy queen, some incomparable silvan goddess.

Rarely, radiantly lovely she appeared, strangely out of place in that homely room.

She was unconscious of this—unconscious, also, of another presence in the cabin until the back-log fell suddenly with a dull thud, throwing out a shower of red sparks and arousing her on the instant from the fit of abstraction into which she had fallen.

With a quick start, she turned her head and saw a tall form close behind her—so near that it might easily have touched her.

It was the form of an Indian, powerful and massive. The face was the same that had peered through the shrubbery at Emmett Darke a few minutes before.

There was a strange light glowing in the fierce eyes fixed so steadily on the lovely face before him—a look of wild passion as dangerous as it was intense.

The savage did not speak nor even stir; but the hard, cruel lines on his forehead and about his mouth relaxed a little as he tried to twist his ugly visage into the semblance of a smile—a semblance that was even more loathsome than its habitual scowl—that was nearer the leer of an exultant fiend than the smile of a human being.

Vinnie’s face was deathly pale, and her heart seemed for a moment to lay still in her bosom; but she tried to meet the gaze of those devilish eyes calmly. She stood quite still, looking into the cruel face, but she dared not trust her voice.

The Indian spoke at length, in a tone harsh and rasping, like the snarl of some wild animal:

"Ku-nan-gu-no-nah has come for his squaw. Sun-Hair is very beautiful. Ku-nan-gu-no-nah is